One
by potterology
Summary: How had she never noticed it before? How had she never appreciated what a miracle this planet was, how fortunate she was to have had a place there?  -  Shep. says goodbye. Mild spoilers for The Catalyst.


**A/N - I was emotionally traumatised by the ending of ME3. But I was also annoyed by it, so I re-wrote it. There are a few spoiler parts regarding the Catalyst, but read on if you don't give a fuck! :) Just a suggestion, listen to Get Up by Barcelona while reading the end of this fic. It will destroy you. x**

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><p>It takes a minute to realise, a second to accept. She knows, then and there, that this is the way it would always be - would have always been. Fate, that tricky, abominable bitch, had her set on this course since the day she was born, since the day she first enrolled in the academy, since the moment she set foot on her first foreign planet, since Eden Prime. What was the saying? "You were born alone and you will die alone." It was funny how things turned out, how you can go from being gung-ho about stopping this at all costs, and then in the next heartbeat - one of your last - suddenly want to turn back, run as far and as fast as her feet could carry her. The Child had disappeared, leaving her alone in the old Council chamber with the flashing console and a gun, accepting defeat because even it knew that this was fate.<p>

She was in pain, a lot of it, but it only hindered; it oddly reminded her of the motion sickness she used to get going through the Mass Relays, way back when she was just a fresh-faced scab recruit for the Alliance reserves. Bizarrely, she couldn't help but think how she met her first real love on one of those warps. He had peach fuzz and was afraid of heights. He used to make fun of her; not cruelly, but in a way that made her smile, reluctantly, because like it or not that shit was funny and there was nothing she could do about it. She smiled, if not a little bit sad, and wondered where he was now, if he was still a soldier - if he was even alive.

In a mammoth effort, she shuffled away from the console to the huge airlock window, the one she had never had the time to look out, too busy arguing with the Dalatrass or Udina. But now, she could look, and what she saw took her breath away.

Somehow, despite the hulking Reaper ships, the pitiful volume of Alliance ships, the explosions and the fire that threatened to consume them all, it was beautiful. Truly and awe-inspiringly beautiful. How had she never noticed it before? How had she never appreciated what a miracle this planet was, how fortunate she was to have had a place there? Home to billions, to her, to her friends, it sheltered them, gave them somewhere to wholly be proud of, not just in achievements but in the challenges they had overcome. For the first time, she wished the room were filled with every Reaper, every enemy, she had ever faced so she could drag them to the window, make them look out and say: Look at us. Look at everything we are, everything we will ever be, and tell me it isn't worth fighting for.

She was crying; full, wet sobs racking her whole body, one hand pressed to the glass, right above what she hoped was Winter Park, the place she was born. Had it just been moments ago that she wanted run? It felt like centuries. She felt centuries old. Her blood was dust in the wind; her skin was a blanket that hung free; her bones were rusted iron bars; and her heart was a brick, a black, square brick that sat heavily in her chest. She felt every beat; she counted them, backwards - a countdown. She started with a thousand.

There would be no going back now. There would be no running for Commander Jane Shepard, only this moment. Only the backwards heartbeat. Only this view, this room, where she tried so hard to make them listen, make anyone listen, and failed time and again.

However, maybe there was time for a goodbye. A goodbye was not so bad; fate could not begrudge her that, surely.

Pushing herself up off the window, sniffing, she shuffled awkwardly over to the console. Thankfully, minimal effort was required on her part, as if the ship - the Citadel, the Crucible, whatever you wanted to call it - knew what she wanted. Fate would not stand in her way this time, it seemed; she appreciated the solid.

She set the right protocols, readied the ship on a self-destruct sequence so she had only to press the button when ready, and then slumped to the ground. A blinking orange light turned green. Curtains up, show time, she was on. Back down on Earth and in the ships - Reaper and Alliance alike - silence fell so quickly that a few stopped to check that they had not suddenly gone deaf.

"Calling all Alliance forces, this is… This is Commander Shepard of the USS Normandy." Her gaze turned back to the view, back to Earth. She closed one eye, squinted, and tried to make out Florida in the burning haze. "This is broadcasting on all frequencies. I don't know if you can hear me. Hell, I don't even know if there is anyone left _to_ hear me. But if you can, I want… I want to… Shit." She laughed at herself. Sniffed. Across the board, it seemed a ceasefire had somehow come about - was it respect for the walking dead, Shepard wondered? Were they listening out of duty, soldiers to the end? She breathed in.

"I am _so_ sorry. I thought… Well, it doesn't matter what I thought. Not anymore. I've been a soldier my whole life. Joined the Alliance on my eighteenth birthday and I have never regretted it. They say combat changes you; that once you've seen it, been in the thick of it, all you want is to go back to the way it was. At least, that's what my commanding officer told me when I made N1. But I never felt like that. If I wasn't shooting something or kicking down a door - or five - I wanted to be. I never wanted to do anything else. I was confident, so sure of my decisions, and that didn't change when they started carrying weight. Not even when millions - billions - of lives were riding on me, not once did I ever sit back and think I was about to fuck it all up. Never. And I am sorry for that. I am sorry that I didn't give a second thought to pulling you all into this. I am sorry that it was my choice, my persuasion, my… _fault_ that you are all here, fighting and dying. Was this my war? No. I'm not so arrogant to think the Reapers are doing this to get to me, but I could have done _more_, should have done more, to stop it! To stop them.  
>"Truth be told, I'm tired of fighting. I think I have been for a while, but I've been too afraid to admit it. Admitting it… Well, you're all soldiers. Could you admit that the only thing you know how to do - fight - is wearing you thin?<br>"This was all going to be so different. We were going to kick some Reaper ass. We were supposed to walk out of the fire unscathed - a few scratches, sure, but not third degree. This is third degree. I am… I didn't…" She closed her eyes. She was still crying, but silently rather in heaving jerks. Weeping, perhaps, was a better word. She wept for humanity, for her failure, for every heartbeat-

"_Commander_?" A voice broke her silence. She jumped, startled, and looked around at the console, which remained as it had before, unused and green. She smiled sadly, again, as the voice repeated, "_Commander, you there?"_

"Yeah, Joker, I'm here." She closed her eyes, relishing in his voice. "You hacked in?"

"_EDI did, actually. Still on speaker though."_

"That's okay. I don't mind. Jeff… I might not make it home tonight. Don't wait up, okay?"

"_You didn't fail us."_ It sounds so stern, so certain, that Shepard could have mistaken it for an order straight out of Hackett.

"Feels different on this end."

"_Well then that end is stupid."_ She laughed in wet chuckles, properly, for what felt like the first time in years. "_You did not fail us, Commander. You have saved us - or are, at least, about to, with the way you're talking_." And there it was, the thing she loved about Joker. He did not pander to pretence. He knew what this was, knew what she would do once her time was up. Shepard allowed herself to self-indulgently think that he had EDI hack in to the comm. system in order to buy her some time. She would have kissed him, had he been there.

"_Permission to speak freely, Commander_?"

"Permission granted."

He did not hesitate. "_You were the best of us. An example, a leader, a legend in the flesh and, frankly, if anybody up here or down below held even _half_ the goodness, integrity and honour that you do, they should consider themselves privileged. For what little it's worth, you, Commander Jane Shepard, are _my_ hero. You taught me what it meant to be more than what God gave me. You showed me how to fight for what I believed in, for what was right, no matter how big the enemy or how afraid I might have been. You were - you _are_ - the best of humanity, because you taught us, all of us, how to be human. You showed us how to care on our worst day, and how to shine on our best. You did, Commander. Jane. _You did_. And we are so incredibly grateful_."

Quietly, she reached up and slammed down on the console. Red lights blared and a harsh, robotic voice pounded through the room, "_WARNING. SELF DESTRUCT HAS BEEN ACTIVATED. WARNING_." She hit mute. To his credit, Joker did not gasp, nor did he ask what the hell she thought she was doing. He accepted it because it was her fate. She had never been more thankful.

"Lie to me, Jeff." She said lowly. He might not have heard her.

"_Lie, Commander?"_

"I've got forty six seconds left, Jeff. Make it a good one."

Once again, he does not hesitate. "_You're gonna wake up in a minute. You are going to wake up in your bunk on the Normandy, safe and _alive_. And you'll realise that you're actually an Admiral, because you've gotten old and wrinkly, and your kids have bugged you for_ever_ about the commendation ceremony you'll be attending later. And then you're going to go up the elevator and walk into the Command Center, where we are all waiting for you. Garrus, Liara, Jack, Miranda, Kaidan, Thane, Grunt, Mordin, Tali, and, hell, why not, Zaeed too. And then you're going to walk into the cockpit, where me and EDI are flying away, and I'll stand to salute, and I will ask you 'where to?_'"

"You were wrong, Jeff."

"_About what, Jane_?"

"You said 'for what little it's worth.' It's not worth little. It's worth everything.

He hesitates. "_So, where to Commander?"_

**WARNING. SELF DESTRUCT IN TEN**.

_Garrus_.

**NINE**.

_Liara_.

**EIGHT**.

_Jack_.

**SEVEN**.

_Miranda_.

**SIX**.

_Kaidan_.

**FIVE**.

_Ashley_. _Legion_.

**FOUR**.

_Thane. Wrex. Grunt_.

**THREE**.

_Jacob. Mordin. Tali. Zaeed._

**TWO**.

_Joker. EDI. Vega. Anderson. Cortez._

"Home."

_**One**_.


End file.
